Gauguin's "The Yellow Christ"

    This is Paul Gauguin's The Yellow Christ which he painted in 1889. The art historian Griselda Pollock devised a "formula" to allow people to decide if a particular piece of art was to be considered avant-garde or not. The painting has to pass three tests: reference, deference and difference. The Yellow Christ painting is considered avant-garde because of the way it refers to traditional subject matter, shows deference to and respect to the latest developments in art, i.e. the Impressionist movement, and how it differs from the Impressionist movement by allowing the artist to show their feelings toward the subject, and the artist can add purely aesthetic elements to the painting.
     In order for a painting to show reference, it must show an awareness of what is happening and what has happened in the art world.  The Yellow Christ references traditional subject matter for traditional artists. Christ is on the crucifix, with people praying at his feet. While the people praying at his feet are not perhaps traditional figures found in paintings of the crucifixion, though one could suppose that the one in blue is Mary, this type of painting has been popular for centuries. It also references the way painters modernized the surroundings of the Biblical subject matter in order for people to more easily understand and relate to the scenes presented on canvas, instead of depicting everyone and the surroundings as they would have looked before the "Common Era."
     To show deference, this painting gives respect to Impressionism by adhering to technical use of paint and brush like Impressionists, natural forms, bodies, the landscape and the way light is depicted on canvas. Although the colors used in this piece are almost simply blocks of color, with little to no modeling, Gauguin paints the light the way it would look on a cloudy day. This painting is also made to look like a painting, like paint on canvas, not the way some painters worked to eliminate that barrier. Some painters worked to show little to no brushstrokes, but like the Impressionists with their thick paint and obvious brushstrokes, Gauguin allows the viewer to see his process.
     Finally, this piece is different, it shows itself as a work that is a combination of purely aesthetic choices made by the artist through the use of line and blocks of color. As I mentioned before, there is little modelling in this piece, which makes it very flat. The trees and people are not perfect representations of the real life tree and people; this is a conscious choice of the artist to make the viewer think differently about the scene depicted. This is also set in a modern setting; the painting is set in Brittany in a field, one can see stone walls, which are given the sense of stone by the pattern on the wall. Natural forms in this painting are slightly abstracted. The trees are blobs of orange with an outline and a brown trunk, this representation of a tree is obvious to the viewer as a tree, but we know as the viewer that it certainly isn't a tree.
     This piece of artwork was certainly on the front line of it's time, with the outlines of the features, the naturalistic perspectives and proportions, and the fact that it refers to centuries of artistic tradition in which a scene from the Bible is depicted in a modern setting.  For these reasons, and more, this painting is considered avant-garde.